looks back

you couldn’t get past them. When I knocked off work, I used to duck down High St and run all the way down to the ferry to get away from them.”

Thomas can remember fearing a Japanese invasion.

“We had blackout on the windows for the war. I used to pull them open and I always envisioned Japanese coming up the road from the beach.”

June Blake married Navy man George Thomas in 1944, when she was 21, and has since lived on the Devonport peninsula.

She had two children, Cherie and Jackqueline. Thomas moved into Eversleigh Hospital in 2018 and has recently been joined there by Jackqueline.

She can still be found taking daily walks around Hauraki and making regular visits to the hairdressers. She enjoys bingo nights at Eversleigh.

She has always exercised regularly and eaten well, but doesn’t believe there’s any secret to living to 100: “It just comes on you and all of a sudden it’s there.”